Man Who Would be German Chancellor Faces Stiff Electoral Test

Armin Laschet, who hopes to succeed Angela Merkel as Germany’s chancellor, has been compared to a traditional child’s toy - a wooden figure on a round base that, when touched, wobbles but stays upright. 

Allies and foes alike are watching to see how close Laschet comes to the tipping over when voters turn out Sunday for a regional election in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. The election is a significant test for the 60-year-old the ruling Christian Democratic Union has chosen as its candidate for chancellor in national elections scheduled for September.  Saxony-Anhalt’s capital, Magdeburg, is the burial place of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I, and there are already commentators suggesting it may come to be seen as the site where Laschet’s ambitions to become Germany’s next chancellor were first buried.  National elections are not “won in the East; they can, however, be lost in the East,” a CDU regional leader, Mario Voigt, said recently.